


Beyond Belief

by chantefable



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe, D.H. Lawrence, F/M, M/M, Multi, Partnership, Rivalry, Spies & Secret Agents, Workplace Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 13:42:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9494009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chantefable/pseuds/chantefable
Summary: Siena, Italy, late 1963. The performance of the UNCLE team deteriorates due to internal tensions.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This story is heavily inspired - or, perhaps, textually invaded - by the writing style of D.H. Lawrence: a distinctive and remarkable English novelist, poet, playwright, etc.

We don’t exist unless we are deeply and sensually in touch  
with that which can be touched but not known. 

D.H. Lawrence 

***

The car was parked in a little twisted street that was attached to the piazza with all the elegance of a leech. Gaby accelerated her pace, hammering her heels against the filthy cobblestones at every step. Ten meters left, and she slipped a little, felt the heel sink into something soft with a hint of a squelch – earth, dirt, feces, never mind – she gritted her teeth and kept walking. To hell with the ruined pumps. Gaby gripped the strap of her purse tighter and kept walking.

The cold midday sloshed about, hesitant light everywhere and an uncertain, milky quality to the heavy air. Gaby yanked the car door open in a rough, graceless movement – too much force and too little speed, but she was on the brink of exhaustion. Fatigue was burning through her; all the tension brought on by the agonizing wait of the last few days – informants missing scheduled meetings in shabby trattorias; Solo alone in his own world, doing breathing exercises and making intolerably bitter coffee from dawn till dusk; the countdown to the deadline; Kuryakin’s seething silence, flushed cheeks and sleepless fumbling on the couch until the sunrise finally streaked the sky with red – all that tension was now combined with the near painful rush of adrenaline at the successfully completed exchange. 

Even as Gaby had walked away from the dingy shop where she had finally picked up the necessary information from their contact, she had felt a sharp coalescence within, something burning bright in every pore of her skin, so much so that she had wanted to scream; now, folding herself into the front seat, coiling tight like a spring, she felt absurdly drained. The exhaustion was both mental and physical: the tension and the terror had ebbed, like a horrible sea born out of thwarted expectations and anticipation of failure, baring a baleful shore of Gaby’s soul. She felt so empty. Forcibly slowed down, halting their actions, aborting their plans, the three of them had been on edge, furious with everything, but most of all – each other. Now, the tightness of Gaby’s muscles was in direct opposition to the looseness she felt inside. Everything was bare: her frustrations, apprehension, anger at Solo’s diffidence, anger at Kuryakin’s obstinacy, anger at her own inexperience – everything was stark, in sharp relief against her tiredness. The folder was in her purse. They were back on track. She could report to Waverly. She wasn’t a failure.

She slammed the car door shut and took a deep breath. The air was thick with stale cigarette smoke and the heavy, woodsy perfume that Solo favored. Marking the territory even in his absence, wasn’t he. Solo wasn’t in the car, but the fabric, the panels, every bit and bob seemed to be soaked with the expensive, complicated chemical scent, as if he had laid claim to this space and everything within. Everyone within. Gaby felt her jaw clench and shoulders tighten, but the frightful lassitude of exhaustion still lingered, and she experienced the physical manifestations of her own irritation as if they were happening to someone else. It was a distant, dim awareness; she cared very little about the way her molars were grinding compared to how much she cared about the fact that the file was in her purse, in her possession – finally! – and that she could call Waverly and not feel like a disappointment to him. 

She cared very little about the fact that her fingers were cramping up even as her uneven, bitten nails were digging deeply into the car seat, but she cared about – other things. 

Gaby took shallow, measured breaths, hysterically thinking about damn Solo and his damn breathing exercises. The air was bitter with tobacco, perfume and heat; acrid taste curled on Gaby’s tongue, unpleasantly reminding of Solo’s never-ending coffee, and, by association, of his bare tanned forearms and the column of his throat – an unsubtle display that was constantly in the periphery of Gaby’s vision, even though it was obviously not intended for her. Solo wasn’t the one picking her up with the sensitive information, Solo wasn’t even there – and yet he was, loud and obnoxious even when physically absent. 

Drained as she was, Gaby could not fight her phantom rival any more than she could fight him in the flesh any other day. She hit the dashboard with her fist and Kuryakin started the car.

Gaby pressed the back of her head into the car seat until she felt needle-like prickling in her sweaty scalp; loose strands tickled her nape. Fury and jealousy were oddly prominent in her consciousness, distinct in the way that other emotions were not; and yet the blessed ebb of delirious anticipation of – death, betrayal, exposure? – that abrupt, swift ebb of earlier tension had left Gaby unable to relish either one: she could not be properly furious, could not be properly jealous. She could breathe, and breathe she did; the rank smell of Kuryakin’s heat drifted from the mix of smoke and perfume and was obscured by them once more. 

They kept the windows at the safe-house half-open all the time, not that it made much difference. Now, however, the car windows were all pulled up, and Gaby, with a strange defiance, refused to pull even a single one down. She put her hands in her lap, clasped them together and locked her knees around them like a vice. Steady. No opening the windows, no discretion, no breath of polluted city air. If only she could fill the car with her own pheromones, overpower the stench of Solo’s obscene perfume by sheer force of will. She ground her teeth to the point of pain and yet felt oddly dissociated from it. 

She had the file. She made it. The mission could keep going. She was not a failure. She made it. She could do – something. She could take a chance.

Out of the corner of her eye, Gaby could see the slight twitching of Kuryakin’s fingers on the wheel, the heaving of his chest. He must be feeling so constricted, she thought, the shoulder holster, the turtleneck, the leather jacket – all those layers tethering him. She hated him in that moment. The city became nothing but a smudge of color, existing outside of the confines of the car, outside of the coffin of their partnership, in a different reality: here, ensconced in moving metal, there was only Gaby, and Kuryakin, and Solo, affirming his presence even while being on the other side of town, trapped at the safe-house like a dog on a chain. 

The past days resurged in Gaby’s memory in all their torturous glory; without the weight of macabre expectation, everything seemed strangely clear and even less healthy than she had initially thought. The car took a sharp turn – Kuryakin was a reckless driver when in heat, she noted – and Gaby kept staring straight ahead with unseeing eyes. Now that she wasn’t constantly conjuring the possible scenarios of mission failure in her mind, now that the visceral paranoia and life-threatening ghosts had stepped away, Gaby was able to truly realize what a jumbled mess their unit had turned into over the past weeks in Siena. 

What emotion did it merit? Hard to tell. In any case, a detached kind of indignation was all that Gaby was capable of.

Kuryakin’s heat was the catalyst, of course, setting in motion gears that all three of them had been previously unaware of existing. They thought that they finally understood each other, that they had smoothed all the rough edges and were capable of synchronized, acceptable work. In truth, one unscheduled surge of hormones was enough for everything to be beyond the pale once more. The previously established rules were unwittingly abandoned, and none of them drew any kind of joy or satisfaction from it. Their firm boundaries became shamelessly transparent, their designated places – subject to doubt, and all that they could do to disguise the raging storm from themselves and each other was to demurely drape themselves in hostile politeness. 

Of course, they decided on the logistics – the sleeping arrangements, the shower schedule, their watches – and they talked through everything that was necessary and obvious, determined to maintain efficiency in absence of normalcy, everything turned topsy-turvy because of Kuryakin’s unexpected heat. But apart from that, all three steadfastly ignored any kind of sensible discussion about the repercussions of their changed circumstances. Kuryakin was as headstrong as usual, loathing to be unmoored by his biology and loathing to admit that he was. At the same time, both Solo and Gaby refused to admit that they felt any discomfort, because they did not want to be seen as alphas who were unsettled by an omega in heat, to be alphas struggling to control themselves rather than breezing through, calm and collected. Both of them wanted to be the latter and, stubborn to the core, wanted to posture in front of each other and most of all – in front of Kuryakin, pretending to have a grip on their emotions, bodies, hormones, even though both Solo and Gaby were seething inside. 

In lieu of self-restraint, there was poorly leashed desire. In lieu of amiable detachment, there was inappropriate craving, possessiveness and badly disguised rancor as they paced, caged inside the safe-house, helplessly waiting for the local contacts who had vanished into thin air.

Ridiculous, really. A single strangled laugh escaped Gaby’s mouth and she saw Kuryakin jerk involuntarily out of the corner of her eye. His pungent smell invaded her nostrils and suffused her mouth. She didn’t feel like laughing and her hands were clammy, uncomfortably sticking to the bare skin of her legs where she held them tight.

They tried to weather the storm by keeping up appearances, so chivalrous, so genteel. Ridiculous. Neither Solo nor Gaby were merciful or generous people; Kuryakin’s proximity was genuine torture – not sweet, not delicious, simply horrible and bestial – and they itched to rip each other’s throats out. Subconsciously, of course; consciously, they were concerned about the mission, monitored contacts, conserved energy, planned for the fallout. A self contains multitudes: the conscious and rational was concerned with the matters of UNCLE operations in Italy, while the subconscious, feral and egotistic, was riled up by the presence of an omega in heat – strong, lush, available. Familiar, of certain, indubitable worth. Desirable beyond belief.

The subconscious raged, becoming inflated and overpowering the conscious. Solo struggled to get a grip on himself while greedily soaking up Kuryakin’s heat-smell; he was preening and striking poses even more than usual, and marking territory with his perfume like a dog pissing on a tree. Gaby knew that he wanted nothing more than to rub himself against Kuryakin, mark him all over and mount him; she knew because she wanted the same.

Kuryakin was in heat, testy and jittery, but he was still Kuryakin – an intelligence operative, hardly oblivious or dim by any measure – and therefore, obviously, Kuryakin knew as well. He knew what they wanted.

And still they didn’t talk about it.

Not this past week, not today, when Gaby was leaving the safe-house for what had turned out to be a successful exchange, not now, speeding past the colorful, busy streets in silence that was way past awkward. It was loaded.

Silence like a loaded gun.

All this sophistication, primness and politeness, pretending to ignore the heat and pretending that it was effortless, a complicated dance of _comme il faut_ – it didn’t work. It couldn’t ever work, not with them. All three of them were vulgar, simple and crass. Petty needling, brutal honesty – that was how they operated, that was what worked. Games and manners were not for them; at heart, each of the three UNCLE agents was a brute with a thin, chipped veneer of respectability. Solo, for all his monkey tricks, was born on the lower rung of the social ladder, and he was never more truthful than when he was being a soldier and a criminal. Kuryakin and Gaby, though initially painted with the brush of relative privilege, were both relegated to the underclass, and, despite professional success in the covert domain of espionage, relished the artless filth of it more than anything, like natural born miscreants. There was a spiritual inertia to them, something that Waverly had no doubt noticed and used when placing them together; perhaps he thought they were well-suited to be mindless executives and executioners. Gaby imagined Waverly’s moue of distaste as he rifled through the personnel files, mumbling, ‘Lumpenproletariat, all of them’ – and found herself disinclined to disagree.

She was so tired.

They kept circling the city in case someone was tailing them after all. Time was indefinite and insubstantial, just like the corporeal reality beyond the confines of their small Fiat; pedestrians came and went, traffic lights flashed, buildings overtook one another while their car remained suspended, immobile, impossible. Utterly impossible. It was impossible to stay in the car reeking of an omega in heat – an omega one wants terribly, to the point of toothache, of madness, of leaping over the edge and straight into the abyss – and do nothing, say nothing, just keep breathing his maddening smell of bitter dissatisfaction and yearning. 

Time was indefinite, and the cold midday had no end and no beginning. Her own shallowness and greed were bared to Gaby, and Solo’s, likewise; this intuitive knowledge was oddly empowering, releasing the shackles of propriety that she ultimately despised. She breathed in, not caring about modesty, Kuryakin’s or her own. He knew anyway. The air was thick, unbearably smelling like him, and herself, and Solo’s perfume, still.

Time was insubstantial, halted; they stood at a traffic light and Gaby finally turned her head to look at Kuryakin. His eyes were fixed on the red light, unblinking. His gaze was hot. He looked like he was hot, sweat beading on his forehead, a sick flush spread across his cheeks and down his throat. Gaby stared at his skin, at the pulse that was jumping just underneath the surface. It would be so easy to touch, to choke and to take, she thought. She knew how much he liked it.

She had known it from that very first mission in Rome – the Vinciguerra Affair, Waverly called it. How pretentious. Gaby had understood how much Kuryakin had enjoyed being pinned down back then. And she had exercised admirable self-restraint, pretended to be too drunk and faked sleep, generously giving Kuryakin an out. Even though she had been under orders from Waverly to secure the trust of both agents who had meddled with the careful plans of British intelligence, even though simple honey-pot strategy had obviously been the most efficient one in the circumstances, she had refused to go all the way. She had stepped back, and not without elegance. Pretending to be asleep, with Kuryakin restless and awake in the other bed, Gaby had been so smug and triumphant, glorying in her own ability and cleverness. She was strong and powerful, an alpha in control of everything, even herself. She could have had him and she had given him up.

She wanted him now. She wouldn’t give him up now, no. She wanted to have him, so hot, so messy, unkempt and worn out by sleepless nights and dire lack of sex; she wanted him right now, limned by the red light and clenching his long fingers on the steering wheel. She wanted him, could she have him?

With absent-minded curiosity, she noted Kuryakin’s full-body shiver and the way his nostrils flared. Could he smell her now? The light changed and they were driving again. 

Was Kuryakin chasing her alpha pheromones or the lingering woodsy notes of Solo’s perfume?

Were they driving faster now, or was time finally accelerating to catch up with the whirlwind of Gaby’s thoughts?

There was a strangled groan; a moment later, Gaby was surprised to realize it hadn’t come from her. She liked Kuryakin’s voice, every hiss bursting through his teeth and every snarl, even at night, even this past week, with his restlessness keeping both Solo and Gaby awake and trapped in their rooms by their own determination and fury – wanting for themselves and wanting to keep the other away; wanting to have the upper hand, one alpha against another, and wanting to prove their own worth, resilience and control. The nights were sheer torture. So many contradictory feelings over an omega in heat. Though really, that wasn’t it. 

So many feelings over Kuryakin, rendered unfathomably precious now that his physical form was augmented and highlighted by the queer biological imperative.

Gaby did not look away even though she could tell her scrutiny was making Kuryakin squirm. She watched with rapt attention the way Kuryakin’s skin bloomed with a lustful blush all over, the way he took shallow, uneven breaths and the way he seemed to inhabit more than his skin, blown too large by unquenched desire. 

Understanding came too late – moments, minutes, days too late: Kuryakin was in a dreadful state.

He was coping with his heat, yes, he was. Just like Gaby and Solo, he was coping with it horribly.

Gaby stared at Kuryakin’s face, fraught with mysterious, sensual misery that only made him more beautiful and attractive. Distress was writ in the lines of his body; he was cramped into the tiny space of the driver’s seat, somehow spilling over even though he remained as poised as one should be. Out of the two of them, it was Kuryakin who was paying attention to the road, to the labyrinthine streets which they kept circling to derail hypothetical company. And yet in that moment, as bleak as any other that coolly dull day, the possibility of exposure and failure abruptly seemed infinitesimal and absurd to Gaby; it vanished into thin air contrasted with Kuryakin’s palpable want. 

Gaby felt all molten inside: Kuryakin was her only remaining point of focus. The placement of her hands – which had bizarrely wandered all on their own, one resting lightly on Kuryakin’s thick forearm, the other splayed open on the dashboard like a pinned butterfly – was inconsequential, as was the bone-deep tiredness brought on by too much tension and too many sleepless nights, as was her bated breath and any trace of Solo’s presence. Even the intelligence in her bag only mattered as an extension of herself could matter, a vague affirmation of her agency inflicted upon the world, a result of Gaby’s actions: it was momentarily less real than the crimson flush high on Kuryakin’s cheekbones, his chokingly acrid scent and the way he went all aquiver because of the lightest touch. Momentarily, he was larger than life, and Gaby was aware that it was crass and despicable to covet him so, to be nothing but bare, sinister instinct to fuck, as if life had no other purpose. But in that moment, it didn’t; and in the next, Gaby hated Kuryakin for it again.

No more and no less than she hated herself. And Solo, too.

Kuryakin kept driving.

Gaby saw the line of his throat tremble, outlining a quick swallow and a deep inhale; the kind of inhale that she had been straining her ears to hear at night, expecting a squeak of Solo’s bedroom door and a dizzying beat made of dozens of inhales just like it. The kind of inhale that had never sounded after midnight to be followed by what would have filled her with so much dread, chagrin and resentment. The kind of inhale that had never split the terse silence to be followed by – anything. None of the selfish and banal things that she herself had been uncomfortably fantasizing about. 

Right now, driving down a street she did not bother to identify or remember, Gaby knew that Kuryakin was paying attention to her, as if she were provoking sensations within him that were similar to the ones that stirred Gaby in his presence. Stripped of earlier preoccupations, Gaby’s mind no longer resisted, and she understood.

Kuryakin was desirable, and he knew that he was desired; his own body contained an infinite amount of unfocussed want that must have been excruciating to repress under the combined onslaught of carnal instinct and stark, conscious realization that he was inspiring such debilitating desire, that he was awash with unprecedented and unexpected power. He had left Solo and Gaby unbound and ferociously yearning through his sheer presence: they had wanted to crumble and fall past the point of no return. Both of them, Solo and Gaby, had fancied themselves impenetrable strongholds of will, and yet they had been reduced to helplessness, watching their restraint corrode and not even fully aware of the magnitude of change. Comprehending that he had such power over alphas – not hypothetical alphas, not random alphas, but ones that Kuryakin knew well, had worked with side-by-side and had developed a manageable kinship with – must have been potent, only fanning the flames of natural heat-induced frenzy. 

The urges of his body and newly acquired intelligence, a previously undiscovered and unused leverage: it was a mighty combination, fire and gasoline, and, on edge as he was, Kuryakin was obviously itching to test the waters, to use his newfound advantage – for personal gain and sensual satisfaction, and in order to realign their relationship along the lines of his own choosing, in heat and out. 

Right now, conscious of the basest shades of her own longing and unable to suppress them or to deny them, Gaby understood.

Kuryakin did, indeed, crave them. He craved them because his own body made him crave to be cleaved open and thoroughly consumed, and he also craved the vertiginous possibilities of freedom and power, at least within the parameters of their UNCLE partnership. And wasn’t it as good as the whole wide world, given what they did and the way they lived? If he let Gaby and Solo mount him, mate him, he was surely going to lord it over them, turning their joining into a matter of ownership. He would have them then, both of them, the reality of intercourse plain and immense. Everything was about power, and so was sex.

Perhaps in the early days, in the early hours of his heat, Kuryakin might have thought it was all going to turn out another way, that either Solo or Gaby were going to use his haywire cycle against him: to take advantage of his pliable state (was there anything pliable about Kuryakin, even with his skin soft and pliant like that?), or to vindictively try to drag secrets out of him (but was there really a way to sneak inside his head, to steal something even aided by the fog of uncertainty and confusion?), or to pressure him into doing things he did not want (but in their case, was there even a way to push without getting shoved – a way to dominate without one’s claim being thoroughly disputed by not one, but two people, alpha and omega?). 

Perhaps in the beginning, when they were still deciding where they were going to sleep and how they were going to shower, Kuryakin expected something radically different than the way it turned out; but now, he was obviously emboldened by the evidence available to him, by a thousand brash, vulgar ways in which Solo and Gaby had proven themselves to be completely compromised, constantly obsessing over the perspective of having Kuryakin and then having this opportunity slip away day in and day out, immutable and tantalizing like the horizon. They had been rude, intemperate, and neurotic; worse, they had been willfully blind to the extent of their compulsion – typically haughty, typically alpha.

They had acted so typically, so _predictably_. Both Solo and Gaby had proven themselves to be predictable and therefore, malleable.

This could not have been anything but a source of confidence for Kuryakin, and yet he still hadn’t navigated their needs, hadn’t taken either of them to his body despite his overwhelmingly obvious handicap. Why? 

Solo would have done whatever Kuryakin wanted, now and afterwards, leashed by the force of Kuryakin’s personality and the ruthless satisfaction of the urges of his body. (Gaby was sure that Kuryakin was going to be ruthless, even in this, that having sex with him would be like sailing through a storm.) Kuryakin could finally have Solo eating out of the palm of his hand, the tentative balance between them forever destroyed, the odds forever in Kuryakin’s favor: Solo, unaccustomed as he was to sustained intimacy, would inevitably lose himself in an omega as indomitable as Kuryakin. But for all of Solo’s deliberate preening, Kuryakin hadn’t mated with him, choosing to seethe in his grueling frustrations instead.

As if cleansed and hollowed by her own fatigue, Gaby was ready to admit that she, too, would have done whatever Kuryakin wanted. A week ago, yesterday, this morning, even ten minutes ago – she would have done anything, careened straight into the hungry darkness if only Kuryakin had said the word: she would have slit open Solo’s obnoxiously bared throat and trampled over every principle of cooperation and management, she would have neglected each and every one of their self-imposed limitations and mounted Kuryakin like an alpha reduced to nothing in desperate desire to prove that she is stronger and better than her rival. Utterly pathetic in her pride. Even ten minutes ago, she had been itching to kiss the ground at Kuryakin’s feet and to fuck him into oblivion. 

Ten minutes ago, Kuryakin could have said _yes_ and had her in his thrall, reluctant and willing in equal measure for the duration of his heat and beyond. 

But he hadn’t.

Even though he must have been aware.

The reality realigned itself in light of this new knowledge.

They took another turn, and the street came at them queerly luminous, pale buildings with lacerations of color accentuated by the whimsically cool sunlight. The street swallowed them, and their car, and their overwrought emotions and withering restraint which were now one with the lingering bitterness of the smoke and perfumed, chemical musk, saturating the air in the tiny space with no escape; all of it rolled into the street that at once became inevitably familiar and recognizable to Gaby as their final destination, and was swiftly melted by some force of great power, like universal indifference or the passage of time, so that previous thoughts and previous worries were no longer a disturbance. 

They were finally approaching the place where they would have to park the car before going to the safe-house, and Gaby’s mind gained a clarity which was akin to the pallor of their surroundings and the candid chill of the environment.

Just as Illya was slowing down the car, a hardly noticeable tremor in his fingers, Gaby became conscious that she was free of all earlier hesitations and aspirations for decorum. There was a fine film of perspiration on her temples, between her breasts and between her thighs: a strange, liquid approximation of a chrysalis or a shell which she was about to discard and begin anew. She was conscious of the compulsion to reveal all of herself and put forth all of her imperious desire, to assert her intimate will and achieve a cessation of all uncertainties: no more hesitance in an omega’s presence, no more yielding to manners and tiresome etiquette, and to the presence and aspirations of another alpha, even less so. 

She was warm all over, barely cognizant of anything but herself. The rest of her surroundings – the hard muscle of Illya’s arm under her fingers, the weight of the bag in her lap, the thrum of the engine which subtly echoed through the entire car – all of it was an impression, an indentation, a shadow, while Gaby herself was solid, full and large, chiseled out of supreme confidence.

Now, all forced neutrality must cease, all flimsy equilibrium must shatter, for the value of the earlier model of partnership between herself, Illya and Solo became obsolete and insignificant in the space of a breath. 

Gaby had obtained vital intelligence, she possessed crucial information: that Illya had not manipulated them in order to achieve his own ends, to satisfy his raw physical need. Neither had he manipulated them in a different way, with more far-reaching, long-term consequences, equating sexual consummation with advantage and influence – which would have made him the puppeteer and efficiently destroyed whatever pretense at neutrality their unit of UNCLE had. The latter would have been an inevitability if Illya had only breathed a word, if he had given the barest hint: both Solo and Gaby would have doubtless abandoned the vestiges of self-discipline and ventured far beyond the norms of partnership between agents of different countries, however temporarily affiliated, would have embraced the possibility to be joined with Illya for the duration of the heat, and in doing so, would have become forever dependent on Illya’s decisions. The extent of disclosure would have been a constant danger to their careers in their respective agencies, and in UNCLE, too; it would have put at risk their very lives. 

Gaby knew with absolute certainty that, should Illya have called them, either of them, they would have become emotionally compromised to an unthinkable degree, gravitating towards him against all good judgment and discretion and yielding to his will, whatever form of expression thereof Illya might have chosen. 

Quite simply, he had a weapon of mass destruction in his hands, and he had chosen not to use it. And it was this subtle, elusive show of good faith that had made all the difference. Now, it was a completely different layout, the three of them were in the grip of completely different circumstances. The shift was drastic and, armed with the new knowledge, with the revelation fused to her bones and running in her veins, Gaby experienced a contiguous change of perception. 

It was no longer about the ambivalent ecstasy of cleaving an omega open, about visibly, grossly triumphing over one’s rival by being _preferred_ and taken to be used, to be a rough, insistent provider of pleasure for the duration of the heat – and then, after the delight was over, while desperately clinging to one’s remaining arrogance, to become a submissive subsidiary to desire itself and the omega who kindled it. But neither was it something as deep – as dumb – as a quest for affinity, as being on the cusp of something as cutting and cruel as love, as genuine, anxiety-ridden claim and commitment. Infatuation was not the right denominator; it might have belonged here half an hour ago, or this morning, or yesterday, or last week, but now Gaby, as pedantic and meticulous as ever, derisively discarded the word. It bore no relation to their situation, to her own feelings and actions. 

Illya’s unexpected generosity and well-weighted kindness triggered another, primitive kindness in Gaby, which was as fascinating and repellent as a reflection in a fun-house mirror. He had not used her, and she knew that he would not; at least, not in a way that one had to fear. And for all that this step doubtless had demanded courage of Illya, and was a proof of his inner force, it was simultaneously a manifestation of weakness. Gaby’s own vulnerability, just like Solo’s, was peculiar and intrinsically linked to haughtiness, and greed, and a brutal need for self-assertion that dwelled deep: an ugly mix of inalienable feelings and ingrained convictions. 

To have this vulnerability _not_ exploited, when both common sense and espionage tradecraft suggested that it would have been most fortuitous for Kuryakin and the agency that would always have his loyalty first – the KGB – it was a rare gift, almost stupidly precious. Oh, Illya must have thought he was casting pearls before swine. He had generously given Gaby and Solo an out when luring them into the dark had been so _easy_. They would have gone willingly, if only to have him – if only to spite each other. And Illya gave up such a marvelous opportunity. It was truly honorable: a gesture terrifyingly at odds with the actual moral nature of their work, and the kind of character traits this work forged. It was generous and quite romantic, a noble deed that belonged in _chansons de geste_ and not in petty squabbles and power struggles of people who routinely carried out reprehensible orders.

And in response to this unanticipated kindness, as shocking as a punch to the solar plexus, Gaby felt a bizarre benevolence. It came from the blood, slithered down her spine and suffused her entire being. She was awash with infinite strength, and her baleful core melted in selfish triumph. She was, quite simply, enamored of herself. She had not been used, and wasn’t about to be used. Therefore, she was safe. 

And moreover, she was in a position to _give_ – to satisfy Illya’s sexual need should she wish so – and in doing so, to quench her own thirst, but most importantly, satisfy her ego. She could be strong and powerful in the basest way: she could, if she wanted, fuck Illya and in doing so, bring him as close to happiness as it was possible. And the current combination of circumstances – the heat, their pasts, their odd relationship – were going to make mere fucking as much of a miracle as anything could ever be. 

Wasn’t it grand? Gaby was dizzy with glee. And it was a fabulously intense glee, and fabulously vile, because along with it came a touch of derision and smothering, utterly egotistic protectiveness. Wouldn’t it be grand to be the one to hold Illya, to fill him and please him? Wouldn’t it be glorious? Wouldn’t it be a magnificent proof of her merit and importance, of Gaby’s goodwill and superiority? She could give so much, and she could be so good. 

It was affection which was inseparable from contempt, and in spite of it – or perhaps because of it – the feeling seemed stronger than any other Gaby might have had for a partner.

And what about Solo? He, too, was no fool, she had to admit that much. Surely he understood the same. Or he was going to. Any moment now; perhaps when she and Illya were going to walk into the safe-house. Perhaps he was ahead of her already, perhaps he had already figured it out. The thought of Solo having been quicker at analyzing the situation and drawing the correct conclusion smarted in a way that was nauseating, and nauseatingly familiar.

With morbid joy, Gaby thought that it would have been grand to die on the brink of such glorious anticipation. A perfect moment, a perfect rush; Illya positively thrumming, so alive and wonderful beside her, like a luxurious machine. 

Illya had parked the car and was now breathing softly. He was so large and intense, and she wanted to smother him, or kiss him, or touch him in a way that was even more patronizing than the current grip on his arm. Because she could. Gaby knew this with absolute certainty even as Illya fixed her with his limpid gaze.

No, she could never be deceived.

Gaby reached for him with a sentimentality that was utterly devoid of feeling. It was for her own sake that she traced his too-warm cheekbones with her thumbs and grazed the outline of his damp lips; for her own sake, she transferred more of her weight and anchored herself against Illya, touching him freely and leeching body heat without reverence or reserve. For her own sake, she braced herself on one knee against the driver’s seat and straddled Illya’s lap, and she relished the way Illya squirmed under her, undulating and rubbing his back against the seat, trapped between delight and discomfort. She was propelled by a vague, unspecific tenderness, and she cooed against Illya’s slick lips before she bit them, and patted his stubbled cheeks and tense shoulders before digging her nails in because she could. 

Pressed against Illya’s front, with the bag uncomfortably squished between their bodies, Gaby let a smile bloom on her face simply because she wanted to, with little thought to whether it was appropriate or attractive. In that moment, she cared about Illya, the pangs of his heat and his moral dilemma, his keen desire to maintain a balance in their relationship – as much of a parody of fairness and chivalry as it was possible under the circumstances. His presence, his warmth and his smell had infused her with impulsive sweetness that Gaby had little use for, and little experience with. She gave way to the feeling out of selfish curiosity, relishing her own sensations as she stroked Illya, kissed him, caressed him and thus provided temporary relief. She rode the wave of vague excitement that came from the contact between two bodies, from the heady mix of stale sweat, stale smoke and fresh yearning that she could smell right at the hinge of Illya’s jaw, and from the simple physical sensation of being commanding, controlling, on top and pressing down, from the impersonal kindness bound to tinge the world of any alpha just about to dominate.

In that moment, she cared about Illya, obviously suffering in a way that was, by default, unfathomable to her. She cared like one would care about a bird with a broken wing that one found on the windowsill: overwhelmed by spontaneous, blunt pity, and a bright craving for universal well-being, but ultimately indifferent to whether the poor creature lived or died.

But now, high on her own hunger, Gaby was feeling uncharacteristically generous. Sweet spontaneity was spurring her on as she sank her teeth in the bitter-tasting skin of Illya’s neck and felt his groan reverberate against her own chest. She wished to alleviate Illya’s burden, even though for so many days now, she had been content to watch him endure with poor grace as long as he recoiled from Solo’s touch. Now, she was as unwilling to have him stoically endure his torment, crumbling piece by piece, as she was unwilling to have him beg for respite. Why should she be so cruel?

A shadow crossed her mind, a premonition: she _was_ cruel and she would not stop, cruelty and failure attached to the opposite ends of the life-switch inside the artificial shell of an UNCLE agent, a shell Gaby was growing into and claiming as her exoskeleton. As long as cruelty was _on_ , failure was _off_. Could she at least regulate the intensity of it? Was that the way Solo avoided insomnia, stripping away the horrible and the unseemly in their life along with the vests and the trousers before bed? She tasted Illya’s mouth, licking his teeth and inhaling the impression of how headstrong and volatile he was, how sharp underneath his rigid defenses. She gave him as many kisses as he wanted, as many as he needed – she gave him more than he would have ever stooped to beg had she been malicious and unfair to him in this precious, shared moment of theirs. 

She didn’t want his humiliation, and recoiled from the very thought of such spiteful harm. She kissed him, and took his tongue into the safe comfort of her mouth, and licked away all traces of terror, boredom, grief and indecision she found in Illya’s kiss, all the reminders that the world was unfair.

Gaby could be cruel, but she would not be unfair, not in this. Not in the one tangible thing where she could be fair. (Fairness could not be a part of the life of an UNCLE agent. Her mind was amazed with this certainty. The world was an unfair place, and their bloody labors and lies would never bring it more peace, equality or just – the might only serve to keep the horror at bay, horror that had been lived and spoken and was waiting to return the moment the people grew complacent and believed that ruthless tyranny and ecstatic extermination could never reappear. Their trade was not meant to cultivate fairness; it was callous and cruel, and its purpose was to suppress and to deescalate.) 

(Fairness was not meant for them, people with rigid souls and contaminated hearts; they would not make the world _more_ fair, but they had to give their lives to make it less awful. They had to give it their all, to keep the spawn of hell away. With that kind of existence charted for them, why should she be cruel to Illya?) 

Gaby breathed into a vicious kiss, a sunny warmth spreading between her legs, uncertainty flattened under the sweep of his brazen trust. She was full of knowledge, full like a honeycomb.

A shadow moved in the periphery of her vision: startling yet somehow expected, a presence that was promised. She looked away from Illya’s flushed face and saw Solo, sleek and predatory in his dark suit – suddenly there in the narrow shadowy space between the closed wooden door and the dilapidated corner of the house, unequivocally present in the liminal space when there had been nothing but thin air a second before: a primeval threat that made her hackles rise.

The world was still and time was moving, a mystery of touch.

Gaby watched Solo approach the car. Onward bound, his pace echoing the anxious rhythm of her heart, Solo seemed to pull the fabric of reality tighter around the three of them, and Gaby was aware of a vortex – independent of any human will or intelligence, there was a vortex of momentarily ignored practicalities and atrocities which was spinning faster without ever accelerating, without a care for the glimmerings of her mind. Outside, around them, life kept pulsing, rushing like blood from an open wound. All currently relevant information made itself painfully present, simultaneously invading her consciousness, an open assault. South Africa had been barred from taking part in the Summer Olympics, but it would still be allowed to make its debut in the Paralympic Games immediately after. Waverly schemed and told them nothing, absorbed in diplomatic negotiations and covert assignments that were beyond the level of clearance and competence of their UNCLE unit. Gaby saw no reason for them to be sent to Tokyo next year, and she resented Solo’s conviction that this was where Waverly’s plans were headed. She resented her own gut feeling that Solo was right. 

She resented this very moment, the three of them caught in the eye of the storm while things were _happening_ , a myriad odd things they were not privy to. She resented being comfortable in Kuryakin’s lap.

The vortex was around them, impenetrable and real. If anything, it shielded them, three hungry, eager people determined to live an ugly, magnificent moment to the fullest.

Gaby enjoyed her fluid anger, rising to meet the one writ in the set of Solo’s shoulders and the movements of his limbs; she enjoyed the spike of her own aggression when Solo wrenched open the car door and climbed into the passenger seat she had occupied only recently, and oh, she honestly enjoyed how quickly she was consumed with a desire to bury her teeth in some fleshy part of Solo, all of them, pulling and tugging indefinitely right until he came apart at the seams, simply disassembled just as surely as the Soviet _Taiga_ rifle Kuryakin had let her handle after the Leipzig Fair. But the satisfaction would have been so much greater. 

Gaby’s body responded to Solo’s presence, wrung out before any fight – and yet, that was hardly the truth, for they had been fighting all along. What was the hot thrum of Kuryakin’s body underneath hers but a fight? 

Her dry, eager hands handling that sports rifle with keen indecency, and Solo drinking vodka from a tall, faceted glass rather than lining up small shots – had it ever been anything but an extended fight?

They were terribly petty. All of them, even Kuryakin – suddenly reckless and spontaneous under her weight – releasing his bruising grip on Gaby’s hip and reaching for Solo’s wrist, holding onto him skin-on-skin and making the starched white cuff of Solo’s shirt hide inside the sleeve of his overpriced jacket.

Had their fights, their suspicion and reproach, ever been more substantial than an insignificant dream, if life itself was an appalling nightmare? 

Did it matter that Solo was all that Gaby could smell, the complex chemicals of perfume nearly obliterating the earthy, natural scents of Illya and Solo alike? She could move closer even as he fully pressed himself into Illya’s warm side; she could be hitting Solo with her bag and digging her knee into the meat of his thigh. She could be generous and tremendous, and let Illya take all that he wanted, watch him take kiss after kiss after kiss from Solo’s renowned mouth: a veritable feast. They weren’t going to keep Illya on meager rations.

She could watch Solo hasten to touch Illya like she had, because Solo wanted it for his own sake, because Illya _wanted_ ; she could watch and touch, Solo’s cheekbone oddly fragile under the hard press of her fingers, and understand him as much as it was possible to understand another person. She could relieve herself of her past sorrow and dismal self-doubt; she could breathe all the delicious filth of him. Gaby did not mind the rakish lock falling across Solo’s sweat-damp forehead, the wolfish avarice in his eyes or the smile stretching his puffy lips.

The three of them moved inside the car, like perfectly aligned cogs in a marvelous machine, powered by a subconscious conviction that right then, they were safe in their little Fiat, safe from the vast, pulsing world and from each other. 

Smooth and robotic, entrancing mechanics of human movement. As if intercourse were a greater mystery than alpha and omega, beyond persons and their personhood. Intercourse was a great, potent force with a significance beyond Illya, or Gaby, or Solo, their individual wants and assumptions.

She took all the sweat and satisfaction, basked in the hormonal rush; intercourse a beginning and an end unto itself. There was delight in the immediacy, and beyond, in the solitude, a growing connection and completeness.

Gaby was not a failure. She would breathe through of the warmth of the night, sound asleep and not thinking about common goals and transient agendas of their agencies, not thinking about the meaning of compromise. She would breathe through the night, night after night, until her insecurities were sponged out, cancelled by the restorative energies of bodies moving with purpose, of fused senses and briefly generous minds.

**Author's Note:**

> "I hold that the parentheses are by far the most important parts of a non-business letter." - D.H. Lawrence in a letter to Blanche Jennings (15 April 1908)


End file.
